906 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[May 17, 1873. 
historian and analyst of democratic institutions said of 
America, I am persuaded that you will hear me out. He 
wrote some twenty-three years ago, and perhaps would 
not write the* same to-day; but it will do nobody any 
harm to have his words repeated, and, if necessary, laid 
to heart. In a work published in 1850, he says: “It 
must be confessed that, among the civilized peoples of our 
age, there are few in which the highest sciences have 
made so little progress as in the United States.” He 
declares his conviction that, had you been alone in the 
universe, you would speedily have discovered that you 
cannot long make progress in practical science without 
cultivating theoretic science at the same time. But, 
according to De Tocqueville, you are not alone. He 
refuses to separate America from its ancestral home; 
and it is here, he contends, that you collect the trea¬ 
sures of the intellect, without taking the trouble to create 
them. 
De Tocqueville evidently doubts the capacity of a 
democracy to foster genius as it was fostered in the 
ancient aristocracies. “ The future,” he says, “will prove 
whether the passion for profound knowledge, so rare and 
so faithful, can be born and developed so readily in 
democratic societies as in aristocracies. As for me,” he 
continues, “ I can hardly believe it.” He speaks of the 
unquiet feverishness of democratic communities, not in 
times of great excitement, for such times may give 
an extraordinary impetus to ideas, but in times of 
peace. There is then, he says, “ A small and uncom¬ 
fortable agitation, a sort of incessant rubbing of man 
against man, which troubles and distracts the mind 
without imparting to it either animation or elevation.” 
It rests with you to prove whether these things are 
necessarily so, whether the highest scientific genius 
cannot find in the midst of you a tranquil home. I 
should be loath to gainsay so keen an observer and 
so profound a political writer, but, since my arrival in 
this country, I have been unable to see anything in the 
constitution of society to prevent any student with the 
root of the matter in him from bestowing the most 
steadfast devotion on pure science. If great scientific 
results are not achieved in America, it is not to the small 
agitations of society that I should be disposed to ascribe 
the defect, but to the fact that men among you who 
possess the genius for scientific inquiry are laden with 
duties of administration or tuition so heavy as to be 
utterly incompatible with the continuous or tranquil 
meditation which original investigation demands. I do 
not think this state of things likely to last. I have seen 
in America willingness on the part of individuals to 
devote their fortunes in the matter of education to the 
service of the commonwealth, for which I cannot find a 
parallel elsewhere. 
This willingness of private men to devote fortunes to 
public purposes requires but wise direction to enable you 
to render null and void the prediction of De Tocqueville. 
Your most difficult problem will be not to build institu¬ 
tions, but to make men ; not to form the body, but to find 
the spiritual embers which shall kindle within that body 
a living soul. You have scientific genius among you ; not 
sown broadcast, believe me, but still scattered here and 
there. Take all unnecessary impediments out of its way. 
You have asked me to give these lectures, and I cannot 
turn them to better account than by asking you in turn 
to remember that the lecturer is usually the distributor of 
intellectual wealth amassed by better men. It is not as 
lecturers, but as discoverers, that you ought to employ 
your highest men. Keep your sympathetic eye upon the 
originator of knowledge. Give him the freedom necessary 
for his researches, not overloading him either with the 
duties of tuition or of administration, not demanding from 
him so-called practical results—above all things avoiding 
that question which ignorance so often addresses to genius, 
“ What is the use of your work ?” Let him make truth 
his object, however unpractical for the time being that 
truth may appear. If you cast your bread thus upon the 
waters, then be assured it will return to you, though it 
may be after many days. 
WOMEN’S RIGHTS. 
The ‘Collective Wisdom’ has again rejected by a 
large majority Mr. Jacob Bright’s proposal to invest the 
ladies with political powers and privileges ; and for 
another year at least, the engaging ‘ Sex’ is to be left out 
of the scheme of the British Constitution. We are bound 
to state that, in Blackburn at any rate, the female appli¬ 
cants for electoral rights have sustained this cruel rebuff 
with almost superhuman stoicism and composure. No¬ 
mass meetings of householding widows and spinsters have, 
while we write, been advertised to assemble on the Market¬ 
place to demonstrate indignation against those brutal 
M.P.’s who have made the female claim to the franchise 
a subject of flippant jest, and by their votes have denied 
the demand. Mr. Beresford Hope, Mr. Bouverie and Mr. 
Leatham are still intact and unscarified. This exemplary 
forbearance under such affront is, in our opinion, evidence 
either that so self-controlled a section of our community is 
peculiarly qualified to exercise political influence, or—that 
these fair ones do not care a rap about it. Supreme 
heroism, or supreme indifference, are the alternative ex¬ 
planations of Woman’s silence under the continuance of 
Woman’s electoral disqualifications. We lean to the latter 
interpretation. There is absolutely no evidence that the 
housekeeping ladies of Great Britain really long and pine 
for the questionable gift of the parliamentary vote, or 
yearn to share with male humanity the onus and the shock 
of political conflict, the secrets and the sacrifices of party 
combination, or the frenzied joy and rage of party triumph- 
and defeat. Why should Mr. Jacob Bright insist upon 
making the ladies this cumbrous present of a ‘White 
Elephant V But we need not ask why. It is the pressure 
of a small but masculine female coterie behind them that 
impels Mr. Jacob Bright and Professor Fawcett on their 
course. The hands that framed this Bill are ostensibly 
the hairy hands of Mr. Jacob, but the voice is the voice 
of Mistress Jacob. Mrs. Jacob Bright and Mrs. Fawcett, 
and the insurmountable Miss Becker, are the real movers' 
in this agitation. They compose the Board of Directors 
of this Woman’s Suffrage Association (Limited). The 
Mr. Jacob Brights and the Professor Fawcetts are but the. 
meek instruments of the masterful female characters that 
rule their destinies. We do not blame them for pursuing 
with every show of zeal that work of championing female 
rights which they dare not, as we can conceive, evade. 
It is, however, testimony to the invincible force of female 
pertinacity directed to a given object that although the 
Englishwomen who want to be active politicians are a* 
mere handful, that little group of strong-minded ones, 
with no countenance from their sex at large, and witb 
nothing to back them but their own courage and fortitude, 
have so far progressed as to persuade more than a hundred 
and fifty members of Parliament to vote for woman- 
suffrage. A full fourth-part of the House has already 
been ‘ nobbled ’ by Miss Becker and her sweet sisterhood,, 
to say nothing of the considerable number who have been 
reduced to such a condition of fear and trembling that; 
they dare not vote against the Bill, much as they inwardly 
object to its provisions, but stay away from the House in- 
cowardly concealment when the subject is on. In fact, 
the political ladies are rife with hope that some year before* 
long they will gain an absolute majority of votes in one of 
these annual divisions, and then, vce victis —woe to the 
members who have withstood their claims when the ladies 
get upon the electoral rolls ! These fair anglers for states¬ 
men boast that they have already got Mr. Disraeli in their* 
baskets, and that Mr. Gladstone is on the point of being 
hooked, while other big fish are smelling at the bait. We 
do not profess to rejoice at ladies taking part in politics, 
unless they are prepared to take the whole tiresome busi¬ 
ness off the hands of men entirely ; but if it must be, it 
must, and we trust we know how to accept inevitable 
fate. 
